I write and speak about subcultures, sexuality, and new media.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “mainstream” sex versus “alternative” sex. In the S&M community we have a term, “vanilla”, which basically indicates “people who aren’t into BDSM”. But is there really a bright line between BDSM and vanilla? Probably not. Most everyone has their own specific sexual preferences, and I tend to see BDSM vs. vanilla as a continuum rather than an either-or. (Some theorists, such as the amazing Dr. Marty Klein, argue that assuming the existence of a bright line between kink and vanilla hurts both vanilla people and kinksters. There’s a lot to say about that, but I’ll save it for another day.)

Lately, I’ve been asking a lot of sexually experienced guys I know for some explicit details about their experiences with women. And frankly, it sounds like the vast majority of women — based on this anecdotal evidence — like at least a little bit of pain. One of my most promiscuous male friends was actually unnerved by this. “It bothers me that all the women I’ve slept with seem to enjoy a little bit of pain,” he insisted, with a shudder. He then added, “It’s just creepy,” which goes to show that even being friends with me won’t cure a person of their BDSM stigma.

It sounds like I, as a very heavy submissive masochist, am outside the mainstream more because of my preferred degree of intensity than anything else (although I also enjoy a lot of S&M paraphernalia that seems to be considered inherently extreme by the mainstream, like whips and needles and stuff). In other words, love bites apparently sound appealing to most people; it’s just that the kind of love bites I like most, which ideally leave bruises for over a week, aren’t.

So, is it silly that I tend to seek partners in the BDSM community rather than the mainstream? After all, during one of my recent conversations with a mainstream dude — who is very promiscuous, by the way, with a reported number of partners over 150 (and no, I don’t think he was lying to impress me) — this dude told me that a fair number of the mainstream girls he sleeps with have rape fantasies, slave fantasies, etc. And, gosh, I mean … if slave fantasies are vanilla, then sign me up: I’m Vanilla Girl.

Except not really, because there are some real and important distinctions between most BDSM communities and the mainstream. Firstly, most BDSM communities have a greater emphasis on specific communication and boundary-setting, which I love. My mainstream dude friend seems familiar with safewords (which I consider the Level 1 BDSM communication tactic), but unfamiliar with more complex communication ideas like the sterling example of checklists. Secondly, guys in the BDSM community have already overcome their sexual stigma at least enough to actively seek the community out — which is a big deal, even if they don’t feel S&M as quite a core, innate desire the way I do. And thirdly, guys in the BDSM community are much more likely to have tastes as extreme as my own, which is awesome for me.

Sometimes people ask me, “Can you date vanilla guys?” That question has a very complicated answer. When I date guys who aren’t in the BDSM community, I find that they’re open to some stuff. But:

(a) Vanilla-but-questioning guys are usually open to a much smaller amount of stuff, with sharply delineated boundaries against anything perceived as too “weird” (such as flogging), and a lot of struggling to differentiate themselves from “those people”. I once had a long-term relatively-vanilla boyfriend with whom I did semi-intense BDSM on a regular basis — and yet when I confessed the fact that I had BDSM fantasies starting at a very young age, he replied, “Oh, you’re one of those people.” He was kind of joking, but he also kind of wasn’t. It was important to him that I, as a relatively hardcore self-identified kinkster, be different from him. Other. “One of those people”. And I am frankly a lot less interested in fucking a guy who insists on putting me in an “other people” box (especially when he himself is doing “that stuff” with me).

(b) Recently-vanilla-turned-BDSM guys can’t be relied on to take responsibility for their sexual desires, to do research or think deeply about their sexuality — maybe because they’re too busy fighting off stigma. People in the BDSM community are likely to have processed least some of the stigma around sexuality, especially BDSM sexuality, such that we aren’t likely to freak out randomly and we’re much more able to really get into things. This is presumably true of women too — a mostly-vanilla lover told me recently, in a marveling tone, that a lot of the women he hooks up with request a little bit of pain … but “I mean,” he said, “it’s true that you like pain more, but also it’s amazing how okay with it you are.” I guess he can tell by my whole body, all my reactions to what he does, just how much I’ve relaxed about wanting the BDSM I ask him to do.

(c) A lot of the time a relationship with a recently-vanilla guy will slide, apparently inevitably, back into vanilla territory. In other words, I don’t trust vanilla-turned-SM guys to stick with it. Most of them simply don’t stay SM, and worse, I’ve had cases where a partner will then start getting anxiety because he’s aware that he’s not meeting my needs. Whatever people may say, I’m not so sure it’s sustainable for people to be into something just because their partner is; not in the long term. Doing something new can be exciting, but if it’s extreme and a person isn’t personally drawn to it, then in my (sad) experience, that person won’t retain enthusiasm for it. I’ve met BDSM people who report success with “converting vanillas”, but I tend to suspect that those “vanillas” were already drawn to BDSM.

In many ways I’m lucky, because I prefer to live in large cities and large cities usually have BDSM communities. Also, I can be open about my BDSM identity among my friends, though not with my employers. This removes a lot of potential barriers around finding BDSM partners. At the same time, though, I still find myself interested in apparently-vanilla guys sometimes — partly because vanilla guys often think they’re way more into BDSM than they are, usually due to stereotypes of BDSM as “advanced sex” (rather than “just another flavor of sex”, which is a lot closer to the truth).

Yeah, of course I meet hot vanilla-but-questioning guys, and I always go through this process in my head where I weigh up the emotional risks. It goes beyond questions like “what if he can’t understand how deep-rooted this is for me?”, which is something I can handle pretty easily. It’s more like: “What if he’s all gung-ho about BDSM at first, and then loses interest only after I fall in love with him?” This has happened to me. “What if he freaks out and decides that although he likes me and he thinks I’m awesome, this sexual territory is just too scary?” That’s happened to me, too.

When people ask me, “Can you date vanilla men?” I’ll often say “No,” or “Not unless there are extreme extenuating circumstances,” or “It never seems to work out when I try.” But the truth is that I frequently end up going for it anyway. There are some seriously attractive vanilla guys out there, and non-BDSM sex is still fun, and you only live once!

And fortunately, this is all a lot easier now that I’m determinedly experimenting with polyamory. One thing that makes me glad that I finally feel comfortable messing with poly is the fact that if there’s something I want to do sexually and my partner doesn’t, I can go do it with someone else. So simple! The flip side is that sometimes you deal with two quasi-breakups in the same morning, but this is also a topic for another day.

UPDATE: I want to be sure that I don’t come across as saying that dudes who aren’t BDSM, can’t be sexually adventurous. Of course they can!

I can sympathize with the difficulty in finding compatible partners when you have a kink that’s hard to let go of. For BDSM in particular, I certainly see the merits and I’m curious about applying it in a bedroom context, but every time I imagine it I always picture two people in silly outfits, and one of them is hitting the other instead of having sex with them. That always seems unrelated to sex to me, and more like a fun past time like playing Scrabble together, but I guess the common element is the notion of trust? Or is it the taboo element it shares with sexuality in general in Western culture?

@Thrext, you sound like you’ve got a lot of stereotypes ruling how you see BDSM, similar to the ones I pictured before I came into my BDSM identity. (In fact I think those stereotypes somewhat inhibited coming into it, for me, because I couldn’t picture it easily.) For me, BDSM has nothing to do with outfits, and a lot to do with messing around with pain and extreme emotions like fear. It certainly can’t be boiled down to “trust” or “taboo” for me, though for some, I suspect that it can.

“Silly outfits” is relative, of course. And based on cultural assumptions!

For me, BDSM tends to take place either in specifically functional outfits designed for restraint of the Bottoming partner, or else naked.

The “common element” for me is simple: it turns us on. As a Top, I experience physical arousal from Dominance and SM play, and my partner also experiences physical arousal from submission and receiving SM play. As a masochist as well, I certainly experience mental sexual arousal (I haven’t tended to notice myself getting an erection from receiving pain play, but I haven’t explored it enough to be sure how my physical arousal would respond to longer experiences).

So when you say “hitting the other instead of having sex with them”, for me “hitting the other” (or pouring hot wax on her, pinching her nipples, or scratching her, or biting to leave week-long bruises, etc…) is in itself a form of having sex!

When people ask me, “Can you date vanilla men?” I’ll often say “No,” or “Not unless there are extreme extenuating circumstances,” or “It never seems to work out when I try.”

I’ve not had much opportunity to meet women that I know are into BDSM, but my general attitude is pretty similar but in reverse. I know I wouldn’t be able to fulfill their needs without going into territory that makes me extremely uncomfortable, so it doesn’t seem worth it.

Frankly, even just the more vanilla-esk biting or hair pulling makes me uncomfortable (although I suspect that has a lot to do with me still struggling with negative and stereotypical views of my own sexuality).

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that BDSM couldn’t be sexy. I’ve definitely seen evidence on Delilah Wood’s blog, and Bitchy’s blog, that BDSM can be sexually arousing all on its own. I’d link to those posts but I think the URLs would clutter this comment, and I’m not sure if HTML tags will work. Even outside of that discourse, I think rough sex is pretty awesome.

I know I would enjoy causing pain to someone (with their consent, of course). I might enjoy receiving pain, too. I sometimes slip into the habit of biting my nails and ripping sizeable hangnails in my fingers, and I think it’s because I like the mild stinging pain of having an open wound. It’s a nice tingle that’s not distracting, but anything worse is, well, an injury. Which is bad, because even a bruise means my blood flow is going somewhere other than my genitals and my thoughts are going somewhere other my arousal. Yeah, that would explain why I might want to divorce pain from sex.

“One of my most promiscuous male friends was actually unnerved by this. “It bothers me that all the women I’ve slept with seem to enjoy a little bit of pain,” he insisted, with a shudder. He then added, “It’s just creepy,” which goes to show that even being friends with me won’t cure a person of their BDSM stigma.”

alternative explanation – or maybe that is what you meant, I don’t know:

I suppose it would be unnerving to find that a taste for pain and thus a certain kind of being dominted appears *universal* among women and not as a particular *taste*, because, as opposed to a particular *taste*, a seemingly gender-imminent desire for this could lead people to wonder if respectively what such a universal taste could mean with respect to interpretations of gender roles in general.

This post also made me think about “mixed-orientation” relationships, for example a queer-identified person dating a straight-identified person.

A lot of the issues you discuss more or less apply to this kind of couple as well. Someone who’s used to “gay” sex trying to do it with someone who’s used to vanilla straight sex can lead to problems and mismatched expectations, much as you describe.

This rings SO TRUE WITH ME OMG. I have always had a much better sex life with people who are deeply, orientationally kinky. It usually means I can get BOTH my vanilla and BDSM itches scratched. Vanilla-but-questioning partners almost always revert back to straight-up vanilla, IME.

@Thrext — Well, some BDSMers do divorce pain from what people traditionally consider to be sex, too … it’s complicated! Someday I’ll write a post on this.

@Sam — Yeah, that is what I think freaked him out about it … I guess I kind of distracted from that by talking about BDSM stigma in the sentence immediately after. But I do think that’s a factor. I think one of the things that often alarms progressives about BDSM is this whole idea of, “But what does it mean that people like this?!”

@Havlová — Absolutely agree. I generally conceptualize pro-sex activism as covering all kinds of sex. And I’ve had a few conversations with gay/queer friends about how we have similar problems partner-finding. In fact, I’ve heard very similar things to my above post about “straight-but-questioning” people.

I’ve never actually had to navigate the waters of dating while kinky. I got amazingly lucky, I’d been involved with a man for a year and living with him for six months when I finally became comfortable enough with my kinkiness to tell him. It could have been really, really bad of course, he could have run screaming, I could have ended up having to choose between someone I loved and having the sex I needed, but he’s pretty happily into it.
So sometimes you get lucky, but if something were to happen between us I don’t think I’d count on getting so lucky twice and at least focus on the definitively kinky. I am curious though if anyone has experience from the other side of the BDSM coin: dating vanilla people from the sadist’s perspective? I feel like that would be even harder, it can take a lot for someone to be ok with hurting a lover if that’s not their thing, but I can’t imagine the difficulty of trying to find someone outside the BDSM community if you’re the one who likes to dish it out.

I’m a sadist. I’ve only ‘dated’ vanilla people a couple of times. I’ve hooked up with plenty of vanilla girls for a one night stand or as a swinger – but the dating attempts were usually problematic.

To some extent, most of the girls who I’ve played with, vanilla or otherwise were at least into rough sex and were usually ok with me being dominant partner. When that negotiation didn’t work out – I just backed off and did the vanilla thing, which while not particularly satisfying isn’t awful or anything.

I don’t know if there’s some kind of pervert radar in my attraction mechanics or if that’s a pretty common trait with women in a certain age group who are attracted to guys like me. But there was mostly some shared middle ground between Julia Roberts movie vanilla, and my collection of leather goods and attachment points.

I’ve had a few people decline a second round – because it was pushing their comfort boundaries. I’m a little weird/uncomfortable with that and I kind of mentally hide behind the fact that they mostly seemed to physically enjoy the events and didn’t withdraw consent – but there’s still some creepy around the edges where i wonder if I was an awful person and they were too nice/too concerned with self preservation to tell me. I think that’s just paranoia – but of course I wonder about it a little.

I’ve had people who it didn’t work out because they were ok with kinky, but wanted their turn at being the bossy one – which doesn’t work for my particular kinks. And a few people who got off on the sex – but couldn’t get comfortable with the implications of the dynamic later.

Fundamentally though, the middle ground for me is kind of a stop gap. It’s fun and it stops my mental itch from going into obnoxious asshole mode – but the background urge for more is still there and bothers me. I imagine trying to go too long in those vanilla situations without a heavy scene would be a deal breaker – although I’ve never really tried it.

I think it would probably be much harder for a female sadist to convince a vanilla boy to receive pain. I know lots of my friends joke about being willing to live in a box if they get laid or crawl over broken glass or whatever. But reality is that while the submission fantasy is wide spread/acceptable with many ‘vanilla’ women – at least as an occasional bedroom only thing (if not in terms of the full blown collar and rules outside of the bedroom thing) – there’s a lot more distance between typical guy and submissive masochist guy, created by the masculinity arch types

Scootah, I can totally relate. I’ve had people decline a second round with me because it was pushing their comfort boundaries, and I’m a bottom. It also makes me wonder if I was an awful person, but it’s more along the lines of screwed-up and spurious stereotypical fears that I’m “turning good men bad” and less along the lines of worrying that they were afraid of me.

I’ve spent a lot of time compiling research on BDSM/kink/fetishism, and the definitional problem of whom that research is aimed it is huge. I admire your focus on consent–and I share that value absolutely–but I don’t think it is really a good way to define BDSM. (Thomas has recently posted an article about this on Yes Means Yes, I believe.)

My impression is that there are three fuzzy but fairly distinct concentric circles between “vanilla” and kink. At the outer limit, there are the people who enjoy some degree of pain or “rough sex,” although they often don’t call it that. That seems to be in the neighborhood of 50% of the population, most of whom definitely do not consider themselves kinky.

A much smaller group–somewhere around 10%–have experimented with scripts, tropes, or props that they themselves might view as kinky: spanking, bondage, material fetishes, etc. They might find those things to be a fun change of pace, or they might think that those things are creepy mistakes. But in either case, their sexuality isn’t dominated by those scripts.

Lastly, a core group of about 1-3% identify power dynamics, pain play, or related scripts as a fundamental aspect of their sexuality, often more important than their lover’s gender. Many of these people make a conscious decision not to eschew that kind of sex, for various reasons. But I think that is the crowd we’re talking about when we say “those people.” Like, uhmmm, us.

However….conversations about kink reference all of those groups willy-nilly. In particular, the second group (The “I flogged a girl” equivalent of Katy Perry’s lesbianism) are often held up as an example of how BDSM is mainstream and accepted, while the third group is referenced to show that BDSM is freakish and absurd.

I think it would probably be much harder for a female sadist to convince a vanilla boy to receive pain.

Interesting. As a guy, I would be far, far more comfortable being the sub than the other way around. (But, again, I still have a lot of screwed up-ness about toxic male sexuality.)

Actually, to be honest, I think I could survive okay in a relationship where I was on the receiving end BDSM play. Not sure if I would enjoy so much of it, but it’s something I suspect I could do for my partner.

But the other way around? Being the dom? There’s no way in hell I could do that. That’s a really hard boundary for me.

I’ve had two vanilla partners I dated longterm to whom I was out about being kinky. One thought the whole thing was sordid and wrong; the other tried vaguely to top me when tipsy, but basically forgot about it after a while. Tons of putatively vanilla guys have hit on me, either at sex parties or in regular life, and after hearing I’m kinky, want to experiment in some way that seems to basically be vanilla PIV sex with possibly some anal (me catching) thrown in.

@Katie — Hahaha, oh my God, I’ve totally been there. It’s so funny how “anal” is shorthand for “kinky”, too, isn’t it? Every once in a while I try anal again, because it’s kind of fun to think about, but it’s never been as fun to do as it is to think about. So then I stop doing it again for a while, and people are so weirdly surprised about that. “Well, you’re kinky, you’ll be wanting some anal sex then.” Not automatically!

About Clarisse

On the other hand, I also wrote a different book about the subculture of men who trade tips on how to seduce and manipulate women:

I give great lectures on my favorite topics. I've spoken at a huge variety of places — academic institutions like the University of Chicago; new media conventions like South By Southwest; museums like the Museum of Sex; and lots of others.

I established myself by creating this blog. I don't update the blog much anymore, but you can still read my archives. My best writing is available in my books, anyway.

I've lived in Swaziland, Greece, Chicago, and a lot of other places. I've worked in game design, public health, bookstores, and digital journalism. Now I live in San Francisco; I make my living as a media strategist, editor, and writer.